Someone once told me that when you give birth to a daughter, you've just met the person whose hand you'll be holding the day you die.

What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.

What makes a treasure a treasure." Marine replied, "is how rare a find it is, when you need it the most.

I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time.

When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth.

There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.

I thought of all the magazine article I'd read on mothers who worked and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently say to myself, 'See how lucky you are?' But it had been gnawing at the inside, that part that didn't fit, that I never let myself even think about. After all, wasn't it a worse kind of guilt to be with your child and to know that you wanted to be anywhere but there?